12 Who Make a Difference: Lloyd Munn

Hattiesburg resident Lloyd Munn is director of loss control services at Bancorpsouth Insurance Services and also volunteers with veterans through the Warrior Bonfire Program.(Photo: Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American)Buy Photo

Hattiesburg resident Lloyd Munn is director of loss control services at Bancorpsouth Insurance Services and also volunteers with veterans through the Warrior Bonfire Program.
Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American

He's been entertaining music lovers for decades at various clubs around the Pine Belt and beyond.

And for the last year, Munn has been sharing that love of music with veterans through the Warrior Bonfire Program.

Munn, 56, travels to Jackson once a month to lead a music jam at the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA Medical Center.

Musicians from around the region join him and play a variety of instruments to entertain veterans in the hospital's lobby. The jams are open to anyone who wants to play, veterans included.

The idea got started when Munn was talking to longtime friend Dan Fordice of Vicksburg about different ways to reach out to Purple Heart veterans. The program already was taking wounded veterans on hunting, fishing and skiing trips, but Munn wanted to broaden the program.

"Because music is a universal language and you find that everybody plays music and that sort of thing, I suggested that we go to where the vets are to see if anyone is interested," Munn said.

Fordice and his brother, Hunter Fordice, started the Warrior Bonfire Program in 2013 to reach out to Purple Heart veterans, particularly those who were wounded in the post-9/11 era, Dan Fordice said.

"My brother and I were both in the military," he said. "We just wanted to help these guys any way we could. The problem was, we couldn't find anybody, and with all the HIPAA laws, nobody could give you any information."

So before the Warrior Bonfire Program was formed, Dan Fordice said, the brothers kept up their search and eventually found a Purple Heart veteran in Louisiana, who told them, "I could spend eight hours with a Ph.D.-certifed psychiatrist or an hour around a campfire with five or six of my buddies there — and that's all the therapy I need."

The veteran and several others — there are no more than six veterans at any given bonfire — went on their first hunting trip and "in five minutes it was like they were best friends, talking and helping each other," Dan Fordice said.

"This is the most therapeutic thing," the veterans told the brothers, and thus the bonfire program was born.

"We took another group to Colorado to go snow skiing, and same thing happened again," Dan Fordice said. "It's not what we set out to do — we just fell into it.

​"A big part of our success is for exactly that reason. We didn't know what we were doing. They want to talk to somebody that's been there, done that. The whole thing exploded and became a much bigger deal than we were expecting."

Munn took that bonfire experience and molded it into a sort of campfire sing-along at the VA hospital, and it took off like wildfire.

"The whole mindset is to get Purple Heart vets back in the mainstream because of suicide rates and all that," Munn said. "The turnout from other musicians has been fantastic."

Sometimes there are a couple dozen musicians who show up to play at the monthly events, so the makeshift stage gets pretty crowded.

"The great thing about it is, a lot of those musicians are veterans, and a lot of veterans come and sit in singing and playing, too," Munn said.

Munn was able to get similar "bonfires" set up in Denver and Tampa, Florida. Another program just got started at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

"The good thing is, people see what you do, and say, 'Oh, that's pretty neat,' so it's brought some other people into it," he said.

Munn is working on expanding the musical bonfire to the VA hospitals in Gulfport and New Orleans next.

"Hopefully getting it set up all over the country," Dan Fordice said.

Hospital director Dr. David Walker, himself a musician and a 1987 graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, occasionally stops in to play guitar at the bonfire.

"I love to see the smiles on the veterans' faces and the staff's," Walker said. "I love to hear the stories people open up and tell me.

"It’s therapy, and they don’t even know it."

Walker said he enjoys talking to the other musicians and hearing their stories as well.

"It's nice for them to be able to give back and help veterans in a unique way," he said.

Walker, who played in a Jimmy Buffett cover band when he lived in Georgia, said it is therapy for him, too.

"I look forward to actually sitting in and showing patients and the staff that it's good to be well-rounded, to see director out there playing and having fun," Walker said.

"It sends a message that life’s about the journey, not the destination."

Dan Fordice said when he gets a chance to go to the hospital bonfires, he, too, enjoys talking to the musicians and getting feedback from the veterans. Some veterans have told him they schedule their appointments so they can be there when the bonfire is going on.

And Dan Fordice credits Munn for making the program a success.

"Lloyd is the most entertaining human being I've ever met," he said. "He can get anybody going anywhere.

"Lloyd's been 100 percent responsible for our music program."

Munn, a Mendenhall native, grew up playing music with family. He has performed solo and with a number of musicians, including the late Jeff Healey and Greg "Fingers" Taylor. He and his brothers often perform together as the All Munn Brothers, which "if you say it fast, you'd think we were famous," referring to the rock group the Allman Brothers Band.

When not performing music, Munn is the director of loss control services for BancorpSouth Insurance Services, helping a variety of companies large and small with risk management-type needs.

He is a board member of the Children's Shelter in Hattiesburg and a member of the Hattiesburg Area Sertoma Club.

He and his wife, Jeanie Munn, volunteer with their church, Trinity Episcopal, in a variety of ways, including cooking for some of the church's events and helping with scouting activities.

For more than 25 years, he has volunteered a week or two weeks each summer at the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi's Camp Bratton-Green as a cabin dad, which includes special needs camps.

The Munns also volunteer with USM's Delta Delta Delta sorority, where daughter, Gabrielle Munn, is a senior.

Lloyd Munn

Age: 56

Hometown: Hattiesburg

Occupation: Director of loss control services at BancorpSouth Insurance Services

Interests: Boating, playing harmonica and guitar

Family: Wife, Jeanie Munn, 56; twin sons, William and Christopher, 31, both of Seattle; and daughter, Gabrielle Munn, 22, a senior at USM

Why he wants to make a difference: "It's the right thing to do."

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About this series

On the last Sunday of each month, the Hattiesburg American will recognize one of the Pine Belt's unsung heroes as part of our 12 Who Make A Difference. These are people who, quietly and without fanfare, have made life-changing differences to those around them.